


it gets dark and then

by shecrows



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Marking, Rough Sex, sad bastard warrior hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-03-31 18:16:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3987943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shecrows/pseuds/shecrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke has never been a gentle man. Fenris handles it, on his terms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it gets dark and then

**Author's Note:**

> the title comes from the song "[hebrews 11:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWbH5tLzNnk)" by the mountain goats, because someone aka [ruth](http://earwen-neruda.tumblr.com/) aka satan's personal assistant sent me the link to it with the words "sad bastard hawke," and i'm still very angry about that.
> 
> also apparently i'm not done having feelings about sad bastard warrior hawke.

The worst of them sits at the top of Fenris’s spine. Even in the half dark Hawke can make out the shape of it, a lush, angry purple, just the right size to fit against Hawke’s mouth.

There’s another bruise over the spur of Fenris’s hip, peeking out from beneath the low-lying sheet. That one is from Hawke’s hands. Its twin is hidden from view, but if Fenris were to turn onto his other side, Hawke would find it, a mirror image. A smattering of smaller marks mars the curve of Fenris’s lower back, just above the swell of his ass, dark, blunt pinpricks where Hawke used teeth before following down, down to breach the tight clutch of Fenris’s body with his tongue. Higher, too, in the blank spaces over Fenris’s shoulder blades where the lines of lyrium don’t reach, marks of different sizes and shapes sucked and bitten into the skin in varying degrees of intensity. Some of them will linger for days; some are so light that they’re already fading.

Hawke’s eyes scan the scene like a battleground, taking careful inventory. He tilts the side of his face hard into the pillow, breathes in the mingled smell of them both.

The fireplace, once blazing, has burned itself down to embers. That means it’s late, Hawke supposes. His body seems to disagree, held rigid in opposition to the hour. He doesn’t know whether Fenris is awake or sleeping, not yet practiced enough at telling the difference. He does know that Fenris sleeps lightly when he sleeps at all, and that Hawke’s touch would probably wake him if he is.

He curls the fingers of one hand against the sheets.

The work of his hands and teeth and mouth lies side by side with the markings Fenris bore long before Hawke knew him. One set is messy and indeliberate, injudiciously applied strength. Uglier, too. The other fans out in long, thick lines and perfect symmetry, the design in some areas as delicate as bird bones. Beautiful, were it not for the origin.

It feels – something.

He reaches out. Frowns, traces the curved silver lines in the middle of Fenris’s back, lingering over one in particular that almost perfectly bisects a bruise.

 _Here_. The two sets of markings intermingling.

He swallows against a noise in his throat. Fenris goes taut as a bowstring, and ah, there it is. The difference.

“My markings upset you,” Fenris says, not a question, voice smooth instead of rough with sleep like Hawke expects. “I did not… ” The pause hangs heavy, the stumble brief but felt. “You have never said.”

It’s verging on accusation, a swiftly drawn defense, preemptive in a way that makes something twinge in Hawke’s chest.

“No,” Hawke says. The word feels stiff, mangled. Not quite a lie. Fingertips sweep up the long line of Fenris’s spine. He thumbs over the livid mark at the top, just below his nape, the dark one branded into his skin hours earlier while Hawke moved over him, inside of him.

He presses down firmly. Fenris sucks in a quiet breath.

“Not those,” Hawke says quietly. Fenris says nothing. Hawke strokes over the mark again, too rough, and Fenris exhales in a noisy rush and edges closer, Hawke’s fingers curving against the side of his throat, thumb in perfect alignment with his spine. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Fenris grunts, edging closer still, then stilling. “You think very loudly.”

Hawke huffs a breath against his shoulder. It’s not enough. He moves his hand, flattening it down and over the meat of Fenris’s thigh, warm through the thin layer of sheet. The muscles clench under his touch, deliberate, and Hawke swallows, touches his forehead to the bruise, head bowed as though in penance.

His eyes slide shut.

Fenris hums, soft and thoughtful. “Do you want to mark me, Hawke?”

This time his voice is rough, all gravel underfoot, not with sleep but something darker. It makes something hot and shuddering turn over in Hawke’s gut. _I have_. His heart gives a sickening lurch. _It’s all over you_.

“Would you?” Fenris continues in that same strange voice. “If I wished it?”

He isn’t making sense. It’s done, and whether or not Fenris wished it is irrelevant because Hawke never asked, never stopped to think to ask, hardly aware he was doing it. That’s the worst part – that he hurt Fenris without meaning to.

He opens his mouth to say so. What comes out instead is a single word that scrapes his throat raw, the fingers on Fenris’s thigh clenching.

“Where?”

Hawke barely has time to blink. Fenris pushes him onto his back in one firm sweep, sheet slipping down to tangle around their calves as the elf presses close, all coiled, muscled strength against him. He hooks one leg over Hawke’s thighs, braces himself over Hawke’s chest, and when Hawke tries to move, tries to reach for him on instinct, he can’t, pinned expertly beneath Fenris’s weight despite the fact that Hawke is inarguably the heavier.

It’s not that he _forgets_. Hawke has seen with his own eyes what Fenris is capable of, the weapon Tevinter made of him. He’s _fought_ him before, in the blighted Fade at least, every deadly, snarling inch of him turned traitor under the sneering taunt of a demon’s false promise. It was a fight Hawke very nearly lost.

“In answer to your question,” Fenris says, eyes shadowed and half obscured by silver-white fringe. He dips his head to breathe against the jumping pulse point in Hawke’s neck. Then he pauses. Hawke can _feel_ how close his mouth is, the hair’s breadth separating it from his skin. “Hawke. Are you listening?”

Hawke swallows, gives one infinitesimal nod.

Fenris fastens his mouth to the underside of Hawke’s jaw and sucks, hard and relentless. He leans into the sudden quick jerk of Hawke’s body, makes a noise deep in his throat that hitches through Hawke’s blood like wildfire. 

“Here,” Fenris rumbles against his neck, head still tucked low and close.

Teeth scrape against the sting. Fenris pulls away with a warm, wet sound, pinning Hawke’s wrist to the bed before Hawke even realizes he’s managed to break free.

A second mark is sucked into the skin beneath his collarbone. “Here.” A third into the meaty join of neck and shoulder. “And here.” Fenris goes over that one again, sucks harder and uses teeth, tearing a jagged breath from Hawke’s throat. It’s ruthless, the pain genuine and sharp, edging into truly unpleasant when Fenris finally stops and pulls back, satisfied.

Hawke has never particularly minded pain with sex, but he’s never sought it out. He knows people do, has fucked enough of them, hard and punishing and pinned to a wall by their throats because it was what he could give them and because it’s what they wanted. Or he thought that was the reason.

No one’s ever wanted to hold Hawke down before. Mostly nobody’s ever tried.

He lifts his head off the pillow and turns into the side of Fenris’s face, nose tracing along the edge of Fenris’s jaw. Fenris keeps still, lets him do it. The knot in Hawke’s stomach loosens by degrees. “Where else?”

“Mm.” Fenris shifts so that he’s lying in the cradle of Hawke’s thighs. “I suppose,” he says, and Hawke is no longer pinned so completely that he can’t reach out to put a hand on the back of Fenris’s head, so he does. Fenris allows that, too. “Here.” He smiles, slow and secretive, leans forward to bite sharp and quick and _hard_ over a spot along Hawke’s ribcage.

Hawke hisses, fingers clenching in the soft fall of hair, but not pulling. The first time he did that he almost lost the hand, and so it was also the last. “That one was mean,” he says, frowning down without any heat.

Fenris blinks up at him, the line of his mouth soft in a way Hawke has come to learn means he’s amused. It makes something warm and terrible unfurl in Hawke’s throat, nearly to the point of obstruction when Fenris kisses over the bite mark already blooming red on Hawke’s skin.

“You could stop me,” Fenris says against the mark like it’s obvious.

Hawke stares, and says nothing. Fenris drags his cheek over Hawke’s ribs, unhurried and thoughtful, though never indolent. Every move Fenris makes is purposeful, the lines of him all intent, even here. There is a focus in him that never quite leaves, a guard never fully lowered, eyes a heavy constant on Hawke’s back as though he’s something that needs watching. That’s – good, Hawke thinks as Fenris sucks three more marks in a jagged line along the middle of Hawke’s abdomen, which rises and falls quicker with each one the lower they go.

“Here,” Fenris growls against the last, nuzzling the trail of coarse hair leading down. He hoists one of Hawke’s legs up with a hand under his knee, sliding lower, Hawke’s fingers slipping out of his hair. Fenris breathes hotly against the inside of Hawke’s thigh, eyes very briefly closing. “And here as well.”

He kisses the softer skin there, opens his mouth wide and tests the give with both full rows of teeth, all blunt pressure. Hawke’s pulse quickens, a heady drumbeat in his ears. He sighs at the slick drag of Fenris’s tongue, heavy and shuddering.

When Fenris pulls back and turns his face to nuzzle into the half-hard length of him, Hawke very nearly makes a sound.

“Perhaps not here,” he rumbles, thick and amused, breathing him in. He meets Hawke’s eyes before kissing the very tip of his cock, which twitches hard against his mouth.

Hawke makes a low noise that feels like it shakes the room. He slides down the bed, rolls them both over with such force that the whole thing creaks and rattles. Now it’s Fenris who’s pinned, dwarfed by the sheer breadth and size of Hawke’s body, mouth an open shape that Hawke wants very badly to fill. The answering hardness pressed against Hawke’s hip isn’t lost on him, nor the way Fenris’s eyes darken, open and hungry on Hawke’s face.

“I am not finished,” Fenris says. It should be impossible for that voice to go any lower, but it does, a heated ache flaring to life in the pit of Hawke’s belly. He punctuates this with the slow graze of teeth over Hawke’s bearded chin, playful until he bites down, makes it sting.

 _Here_ , Hawke thinks, and buries his face in Fenris’s neck. He cants his hips closer, thick arms bracketing his sides, fencing him in. “I don’t care.”

“Mm,” Fenris concedes. “But I do.”

He doesn’t entirely follow what happens next. Only that Fenris shifts, and then one of Hawke’s arms gives out entirely, just long enough for the elf to push back against Hawke’s weight with his whole body and roll out, whip-like, from underneath him.

Hawke smothers a growl into the sheets. Fenris lays a hand on his shoulder, chuckling softly, and laughter isn’t something Hawke is used to in bed either, but he likes the sound.

The soft fall of Fenris’s hair tickles Hawke’s spine and, “Stay,” he says, palm flattening and pressing down.

Hawke does.

Fenris maps out the broad span of Hawke’s shoulders, leaving marks as he goes. Teeth, sharp and pointed and wicked, alternate with hot, stinging suction, one hand braced against Hawke’s ribs, an anchor and reminder both. It isn’t gentle work, but it leaves Hawke hot all over, skin tight with it. It’s silent now, too, except for the soft, wet sounds of Fenris’s mouth roaming over his flesh, no longer naming each new spot with words. _Here_ , Hawke thinks over the fresh, blooming prickle of burst vessels over a shoulder blade. The careful deliberation poured into each mark is like a drug in itself.

It’s also everything that’s different.

Weight against the backs of his thighs, and Fenris straddles him, makes an unhappy sound.

“What?” Hawke asks, voice rasping.

“Your scars.”

Hawke lifts his head so he isn’t mumbling into the sheets. “What about them?”

“You have too many,” he says, the frown so heavy Hawke can practically see it without turning.

Hawke snorts in surprise. “I’ll file a complaint with Aveline.”

Fenris scores the ridge of Hawke’s hip with his teeth in rebuke, sucks a spot cruelly into the join of ass and thigh.

“She would ignore it. Also,” Fenris says, flattening out over the breadth of Hawke’s back to breathe softly against the nape of his neck, “you were thinking loudly again. Why?”

Hawke blows out a frustrated breath. “I’ve said.”

“You have said nothing,” Fenris says, gently biting his ear. “Next to nothing. And I do not like to guess.”

“Well you can’t like – _that_ , either.” The growl sits heavy in Hawke’s throat, bleeding into the words. “What I’ve done to you. What I _do_.”

Fenris is silent for several moments, but not tense. “There are many things you do that I do not like. A week ago you helped the blood mage fix a leak.”

Hawke bristles at the term, powerless as he is to dispute it. The second part is also true, and if Merrill didn’t quite thank him for it afterward, at least they managed to go a few hours without squabbling like dogs.

“There was a hole in the roof,” Hawke says.

“Mm,” Fenris concedes too easily. “Perhaps it would have eventually driven her to leave.”

Hawke twists a glare over his shoulder, not in the mood to tread over this particularly well-worn argument.

“There.” Fenris is actually smirking, but his eyes are hard with defiance. _Tread carefully_ , they say. “Have you ever known me to keep quiet, suffer a thing in silence?”

Hawke braces his weight on both forearms, brows hitching with unhappiness.

“I put marks on you.”

Fenris thumbs over a spot on Hawke’s neck, pressing down. “As I have, on you.”

“I didn’t _mean_ to,” Hawke says, the words bursting forth, an ugly, wretched truth Hawke spits out like a bad taste. He’s breathing hard with the effort it takes to keep calm, Fenris a still, heavy presence over him.

"Did you not?"

Hawke swallows, and all of a sudden he's gone cold.  _Yes. No._ And then, with a wretched twist:  _Which is worse_.

The touch of Fenris’s mouth against Hawke’s temple is gentle. “Hm." As though Hawke's silence is answer enough. Maybe it is. "You would have stopped, had I asked.”

Hawke closes his eyes. There’s truth in that, though not enough to absolve him entirely. As though reading his thoughts, Fenris fists a hand in Hawke’s hair, pulls just shy of pain. Any softness in him is gone quicker than Hawke can blink his eyes open, lips parting on a quiet breath.

“Do not do me the indignity of believing I have no choice in this,” Fenris says in a voice like hot steel. “ _You_ are my choice. Everything I allow, I allow by choice.” He takes Hawke’s jaw in hand, pulls it back so Hawke can meet his gaze, hot and furious in the low light. “And I would bear the brunt of you.”

Kissing Fenris is like breaking a stranglehold, every time.

Hawke groans, deep and shuddering and rattling all the breath in his body, twists against the hand in his hair to seek out more of Fenris’s mouth than the damned angle will grant him. With a bitten-off noise of pure frustration, he turns beneath the weighted splay of dark limbs, bucks up and breaks the kiss just long enough to get both hands on Fenris’s arms and bear him back down, sucking hard and ruthless on his tongue, swallowing the soft moan Fenris makes into his mouth.

The arch of Fenris’s body is a smooth, hard line that demands everything. Hawke can’t move fast enough, heart beating a mad rhythm as he shoves a hand under Fenris’s thigh, braces it open. A small bottle is slapped into his hand out of seemingly nowhere, and Fenris wraps fingers tightly around his wrist, brings the hand up to his mouth and tugs the cork out with his teeth.

“Do you need,” Hawke begins to ask, looking down at Fenris and stilling.

Fenris smiles slowly and shakes his head, eyes impossibly dark, bites down on the bearded line of Hawke’s jaw. “I can feel you, still.”

 _Fuck_. That hits Hawke like a fistful of knockout powder, fading everything else out nearly to black. He pours the slick over his hand without even looking, pushes Fenris’s legs open wider, using his entire body, the strong angle of his hips. The noise caught in Fenris’s throat is a distant rumble against Hawke’s mouth, which widens and sucks as though to draw it out, past Fenris’s lips.

He drags his thumb down and over the relaxed ring of muscle, testing the stretch. It’s slow, almost lazy except for the way Hawke can barely breathe for want of him, skin tight with the short little breaths Fenris is making by his ear. He slides it in, finds him loose and easy and giving back hardly any resistance at all until his palm is flush against Fenris’s ass, warm and wide over the muscled curve of it, and Fenris clenches hard around him.

“As I _said_ ,” Fenris quips, edge of impatience turning the syllables sharp, and clenches again.

Hawke growls, heart constricting. Impossible. “Hush.”

It’s all Hawke can do to remember to slick himself before lining up, pushing in, one hand clamped down tight over the meat of Fenris’s thigh. Fenris reaches between them and picks up the jar that’s leaking its contents all over the bed, drips more of it over the rim Hawke is slowly stretching with his cock and tosses it aside. Then he braces fingers against his own ass, brushing them against Hawke’s cock, _spreads himself open_ for Hawke to fuck into. 

Resolve crashes against need – the need to move, to bury himself as hard and deep as he’s allowed, and that’s the most amazing part of all, he thinks, that Fenris _lets him_ , his words echoing in Hawke’s head, his throat, the very spaces between his ribs.

He jerks his hips once, twice, and then he _is_ , and they are, and Fenris is swearing something dark and foreign at the ceiling, head thrown back to bear the glorious length of his neck for Hawke’s mouth to devour, and it’s – he’s –

“ _Maker_ , Fenris,” groaned against a fresh mark blooming at the base of Fenris’s throat, and Hawke can’t stop, can’t _think_ , because there’s a hand fisted into his hair and pushing him close again the moment he tries to pull away.

Hawke licks over the long lines of Fenris’s collarbones, tasting sweat, pacing his thrusts hard and steady in counterpoint to the wild drumming of his heart. Fenris hums, low and sharp, at a particularly deep one, the fingers in Hawke’s hair tightening.

Hawke swallows hard. “You feel –  you always feel – _fuck_ ,” and Fenris is pulling on his hair, not coaxing but _demanding_ until Hawke is blinking down at him with heavy eyelids, mouth an open, useless shape.

The hand in his hair gentles but doesn’t let go.

“You also,” Fenris growls, and bites the tip of Hawke’s nose, then his mouth, “feel.”

What Hawke wants – the weight of it – feels like too much and not enough. It’s overwhelming, abrupt and terrible, Fenris’s question a damning echo in his head. _Do you want to mark me, Hawke?_ Hawke's breath goes tight and stuttering, because some part of him _does_ want, desperately and not like the others who would touch the marks Hawke left on their throats afterward like precious things to be coveted while Hawke felt nothing at all. It’s a reminder of what Hawke already knows: that he isn’t a particularly good man. That what Hawke wants is probably a great deal more than what good men should.

He closes his eyes and makes it less, narrows it down to the heated press of their bodies, the arch and heave of them trying to move closer, Fenris’s breath hitching and sighing whenever Hawke brushes against something inside of him.

“I can’t,” he says, shuddering at the sting of nails against his scalp. “I want – something.” He drags Fenris closer. “But I won’t be able to touch you.”

Fenris nods, eyes gleaming and dark and so strange, sometimes, the leagues of depth in them. “Show me,” he says, voice rough like the drag of flints, sparking heat.

Hawke hoists Fenris up with both arms, lifting him easily, moves up and back so he’s braced on his knees and the soles of his feet, thighs supporting Fenris’s weight while one arm wraps around the elf’s waist and holds fast. He braces the other hand on the sharp cut of Fenris’s hip, steadying, Fenris’s arms looping around his neck, and when he thrusts in, the angle of their hips impossibly wide, Fenris chokes out a groan and _claws_ at Hawke’s shoulder.

“ _That_ , again,” Fenris says in a dangerous tone that dares Hawke to refuse, as though refusal weren’t the furthest thing from Hawke’s mind, and Hawke does _that_ , again, teeth replacing the hand on Hawke’s shoulder as Fenris bites down, hard. “ _Again_ ,” he says, practically a snarl, the closest Fenris ever comes to pleading.

It isn’t everything Hawke wants. Fenris’s cock is a hard curve against his belly that Hawke would badly like to taste, but not even a mouthful of Hawke’s shoulder is doing much to muffle the sounds Fenris is making anymore, thick, bitten-off moans every time Hawke fucks up into him, and that’s enough, somehow, to scatter the rest.

He drives into him as hard as he can with what leverage he can manage, rolls his hips in short, shallow thrusts as Fenris works with the push and pull of Hawke’s hands, fucking himself on Hawke’s cock while fisting a hand around his own. Fenris working toward his own release is beautiful in no small way. He’s taut and yielding in turns, driving the motion of his hips and then letting himself be taken, putting all of his weight on Hawke’s body, and _there_ , that’s it, the moment when everything in Hawke goes tight and hot and _thrumming_.

Hawke knows what submission looks like. This isn’t that, and maybe that’s the difference. Hawke can't picture Fenris wanting Hawke's hands around his throat, but he knows this even if he doesn't know the word for it: the moment when Fenris goes pliant in his hands, relinquishes the fight of it and lets Hawke give and take at his leisure, move his hips and change the angle just _so_ , startling a weak cry out of him that drives Hawke half out of his _mind_ with the need to claim, cover, protect.

Then Fenris arches his back, lets out a deep, guttural whine that rattles Hawke’s bones. Hawke fucks him through it, fierce and ungentle and hitching unevenly at the feel of Fenris coming, warm against his heaving ribs.

 _Here. Here. Here_. A thin mantra accompanying each hard slide of his cock pushing deep into the hot give of Fenris's body. Fenris is saying something in his ear that Hawke can’t make out over the sound, _here, here,_ in Fenris’s voice, too. Slick fingers probe at Hawke’s lips, and Hawke opens, groans at the raw, bitter taste of Fenris’s release and sucks them in, biting at Fenris’s knuckles once he’s licked every last bit of it into his mouth.

He thinks in a distant sort of way that he’s holding on too hard, that he always –

“Hawke,” breathed roughly against his suddenly empty mouth, and Fenris’s damp fingers are firm pressure against the side of his face, holding him in place. “Let me hear you.”

Hawke’s whole body clenches with need. He grips Fenris’s hips with both hands, holds him down until he feels the delicate arch of bones underneath, forgets that there will be bruises. Fingernails scrape over Hawke’s chest, catching against a nipple, and Hawke growls.

“No,” Fenris murmurs, thick and unsteady, clenching hard around his cock, “let me _hear you_.”

Hawke swears and shoves Fenris onto his back, pins him in place with his hands and his mouth and the sharp, pistoning motion of his hips, pushing one of Fenris's legs over his shoulder and bearing down, into, against. He _wants_ , fuck, all of him, every last impossible inch, wants to leave himself in every space he can reach, mark himself into every stretch of skin Fenris will let him, and not just because he can, or because he doesn't know how not to, but maybe because he never quite learned how to hold onto things any other way. He wants it so badly he's shuddering with it, the dam bursting, groaning deep and long and powerful as he pumps his hips hard into tight, clutching heat and spills, orgasm stuttering through him in messy waves until it feels as though there isn’t enough air left in his lungs.

His head falls heavy on Fenris’s shoulder. Fenris’s spent cock twitches impossibly against his thigh. Hawke kisses a spot blindly on Fenris’s neck, and it’s almost tender.

The first time Hawke put his hands on him like this, he thought he’d gotten it wrong. Some part of it, at least – this part, or after, the line of Fenris’s shoulders stiff with misery because of something Hawke had or hadn’t done. It’s always that, somehow, in the end. And no small part of Hawke wonders if he isn’t getting it wrong still.

“I would stop,” he says simply, voice rough like it’s being dragged out of him. “If you asked.”

But then. There isn't much he wouldn't do if Fenris asked him.

Fenris’s hand is a warm weight on the back of Hawke’s head.

The grate is cold by the time Hawke has disentangled himself long enough to fetch the washbasin and cloth. He wipes them both clean in the dark, unable to see the new marks he has made on Fenris’s flesh, and falls into bed at the hard tug of fingers wrapped possessively around his wrist, and falls asleep with Fenris’s mouth a stark claim on the pulse at his throat.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](http://leighway.tumblr.com/).


End file.
